Always on My Mind

by Susan May Warren

  It was then I realized it was the first time since Mother died that I truly wasn’t afraid.

  JULY 1

  My dreams are simple. I want to have a family. A stable life. Someone who loves me.

  A home.

  Thor took me on a picnic two days ago and told me that he too wants a home, a family. Children. To make his way in the world as a merchant. I suppose he is not unlike Father with his aspirations.

  How strange my tailored world must seem to him—a woodsman, lumberjack, sailor.

  When I told him of Father’s death and how Duncan rescued me from the flames, he fell uncharacteristically quiet. For the first time, listening to my words in the wind, against his silence, I heard my secret fears. But certainly Duncan is innocent of Father’s blood.

  Then Thor asked the most peculiar thing. He asked, if I had the choice, would I choose my manicured life or one of uncertainty. Foolish question, of course, for everyone longs for the surety that life will be without blemish.

  Thor listened through it all while sprawled on the blanket, the sun turning his hair to gold, his skin to bronze. He has a way about him that makes the world seem small when he walks into it. And when he touches my hand, my entire body goes limp as if I am a handkerchief left in the sun.

  It is nearly two months since Duncan has left me, and I fear he is not returning.

  Deep inside, I am also beginning to fear that he will.

  JULY 10

  Today we hiked to the falls behind the lodge, a roaring kettle of frothy water. Thor took my hand, and we climbed to the higher falls, where he spread out a picnic, perched above the ruckus, and we lay on our backs and traced the clouds. He says God is out there, and when we fix our eyes on Him, so is our future. He has a funny way of talking about God—easy, unafraid. I mentioned it, and he says it is because fear is a result of looking at ourselves.

  Thor’s large hand took mine, and he told me to look up at the largeness of God. He said that God’s favor depends on His greatness, not our smallness. His great love, showered upon us. He says that a small life is lived by staring inward, but a large one is lived by diving into God’s love.

  I am not sure. It seems that God’s love should be more tame, more reasonable. Expected and attained.

  Thor walked me home, and in the soft glow of the lamplight near the back door, he pulled me into his arms. He searched for words in my eyes and then kissed me. Gently, yet with the taste of the wilderness, untamed, bold and free in his touch.

  It was only after he let me go that I realized what I’d done and fled to my room in shame. This is why I know Thor is wrong. Because how can God not love a man like Thor? And likewise turn away from a sinner like me?

  “DON’T BE AFRAID, RAINA. Nothing down here will bite you.”

  Gust stood at the top of the stairs, one hand on the cord of the overhanging light, the other on a makeshift banister that led down to the dungeon below the store. The room was black as pitch, with the odor of rust, oil, and dirt rising from the darkness.

  “What’s down there?” She glanced back at the shop, where the gray wash of light turned everything to shadow. The sun fought to burn away the clouds this morning, a valiant attempt at cheer despite the biting cold.

  He turned on the light and it bathed the stairs, puddling at the bottom. “I want to show you something.”

  She wanted to reach out and steady him as he ventured down one delicate, feeble step at a time. He wore a pair of dark wool pants, gray suspenders, and a bow tie today, like he might be a shopkeeper out of the fifties, and had shown his age this morning by his consternation over starting his computer.

  “Confounded thing just keeps beeping at me.”

  But when she’d put in his password—which she pointed out to him again, taped to his metal filing cabinet—she discovered they’d sold the entire collection of milk glass on eBay.

  They’d spent the morning boxing it up. “The window looks so empty,” Gust had said, staring at the vacant window, something of melancholy in his expression. Based on the dusty circles etched into the glass shelving, the figurines, vases, cups, and perfume bottles hadn’t been moved in fifty years.

  Purposely, no doubt.

  In fact, over the past month, the junk shop—as Monte put it—had been transformed into a clean, uncluttered antique shop with the sale of miscellaneous vintage signs, a set of four red-vinyl stools from the teardown of the malt shop, a malt maker, and two penny-operated grocery store rides—one a boat, the other a zebra. Raina had sold an Underwood typewriter that Gust used to type receipts and an orange Zenith record player from the 1960s, along with a small vinyl collection still in the wrap, as well as a box of drive-in movie speakers.

  “Where do you get this stuff?” she’d asked as she packed up a stack of 35mm film reels.

  “Here and there,” Gust said, handing her the tape. “When I see someone throwing out something perfectly good, I can’t bear but to save it.”

  His words rattled around in her now as she descended the stairs behind him. “Please don’t tell me there are more . . . antiques . . . down here.”

  “Undiscovered treasures, my dear.” Gust reached the bottom of the stairs, edged out into the darkness, and found another hanging string. He pulled it as Raina reached the dirt floor, and fluorescent light flooded the basement storage room, bouncing against the grimy cement walls.

  “Oh, my.” Under the bright glow of the room, an aisle of sorts tunneled through rows of crates and boxes filled with cables, greasy machinery parts, old stage lighting, mason jars, and books. Gust had attempted a meager organization by building shelving against one wall—she spied a box of soapbox derby cars and a clear plastic bin of what looked like comics. Metal alloy toys and wooden lawn art and—

  “Is that an apple peeler?” She picked up the brushed metal object. It resembled a vise at one end, with a large gear attached to a handle and a three-pronged fixture to hold the apple as a blade filleted off the skin. “My grandmother had one of these.”

  “It was my mother’s,” Gust said, rooting around in a section of boxes.

  “What are you looking for?” She came over to him and peered into the crate he’d just uncovered. “Are these headlights?”

  “Oh, those.” He picked one up, found a rag from a nearby crate, and wiped off the dust. “This came off a 1928 Hispano-Suiza H6C boattail roadster someone found in the woods by Mineral Springs. I had to have myself a look-see, so I tracked it down. Beautiful car, destroyed by the elements, but quite the looker back in the day. Probably just a pile of rust now.”

  “Is it still there?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Dunno. Not even sure I could find it again. But these headlights are beauties.”

  She tried to see them the way he did, attached to a sleek convertible roadster with running boards and spoke-hub wheels.

  Not unlike the famed Duncan Rothe’s car.

  “Gust, have you ever heard the story of Duncan Rothe?”

  “Of course. Everybody in these parts has. It’s an old legend.”

  “How did it get started?”

  “Oh, I reckon it didn’t help that the law come up here looking for Duncan. Said he killed a man down in Chicago, but by the time they got here, old Duncan was long gone.”

  “I’ve been doing some research, and I think Duncan might have known Aggie Wilder.”

  Gust raised an eyebrow. Then he shook his head. “Don’t know how. Aggie was a gentle soul—full of compassion. She would have never been mixed up with a murderer.”

  “People find themselves in unexpected places. Life just happens.”

  Gust put the headlights back, but Raina made a mental note to retrieve them later, take some pictures, and put them up on eBay. “Nah. I never met a kinder, more giving soul than Aggie. No one would have blamed her for shutting herself up after her son died—”

  “What son? I thought she only had a daughter.”

  He frowned. “Nope, although he was born quite a bit before Gi
nny was. Otto died when he was ten. He fell through the ice up near Mineral Springs.”

  “Sad.”

  He continued to shift crates around. “Aggie and Thor moved to Deep Haven not long after. A few months later, Ginny was born.”

  He sighed, a smile tipping his lips. “When Aggie died, Deep Haven hosted the biggest funeral we’d ever seen—before or since. Packed house, and we had it at the Lutheran church, despite her being an Episcopalian.” He picked up a shadow box of medals, set it aside. “Did you know that when she opened the hotel, she had no set rates—just a Pay what you can sign?”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. See, we find here in Deep Haven that people show up to start over or even just escape. And when they do, Aggie wanted to make sure they had a place to stay.” He glanced at Raina. “It probably helped that Thor footed the bill with his trading post, but Aggie cooked and cleaned and ministered for nearly twenty-five years at the old East End Hotel.”

  Raina had seen pictures on the bookshelf of Aggie standing in front of a rickety two-story hotel at the edge of the harbor, on a porch that wrapped around the building to face the sea.

  The words from Aggie’s journal filtered back to her. “My dreams are simple. I want to have a family. A stable life. Someone who loves me.”

  “A home.”

  And she’d gotten that. With Thor.

  “Grab the end of that box.” Gust gestured to another crate filled with what looked like copper, and Raina made another mental note as she helped him move it to the floor.

  “Aggie also started the first crisis center in town,” he said. “It was called Haven House, and she often took in women, no questions asked. Gave them jobs at the hotel. My wife, Noreen, volunteered there. She said Aggie had a way of making each woman see her own worth. She always said the best days were ahead, and she wanted to give them the gift of their future. . . . Oh, here they are.”

  He crouched next to an uncovered crate filled with odd-looking glass bowls. Grimy, covered in a lifetime of dust and dirt, they looked like misshapen knobs. He held one to the light.

  “What are they?”

  Gust smiled. He had a lean face, and sometimes she could see his features reflected in Monte, but when he smiled, an unfamiliar warmth touched her heart. “Wait and see.” He grabbed one end of the box, Raina took the other, and they wove their way through the channels to the stairs.

  “I can carry this, Gust,” she said, seeing him labor.

  He put up a fuss, but she managed to fight him for it and win. She carried the crate up to the store and set it on the counter.

  In the light, she recognized different colors of glass—blue, green, clear, brown—but the filth that covered them rendered them unimpressive.

  Gust shuffled his way upstairs, huffing by the time he reached the top. He held up a finger as if to say, Wait.

  Then he went into the tiny bathroom. She heard running water, and he returned with a bucket and a washcloth. He rolled up his sleeves, then took one of the blue knobs and dunked it in the water.

  “These are glass insulators. Back in the early day of the telegraph, linemen used these to connect the electrical line from pole to pole. Later, they were used for telephone and electric lines.” He leaned close to her. “I had a buddy who worked as a lineman. Gave me crates and crates of these.”

  He pulled the knob from the water, cleaned it. Then he dried it with another rag. “The insulators used a lot of cullet, or recycled glass, in them, and you get different colors depending on the cullet. If it wasn’t mixed well, you’d get ribbons of color, like this thread of white.”

  As the store light caught it, the insulator turned from a deep cobalt blue to an array of blues, rich indigo to lighter turquoise. It refracted the light and sent the color through the store, washing everything in a delicious ocean of blue.

  “Wow.”

  “See? This is why I never throw anything away.” His hazel eyes warmed as he smiled at her. “Other people might consider it junk. But you just have to clean it up, hold it up to the light, and suddenly it becomes breathtaking.”

  His gaze lingered on her and she had the strangest curl of affection for him, as if he were trying to tell her something.

  Raina turned away. “I’ll wash these and take their pictures, get them listed on eBay.”

  “No,” he said, touching her shoulder. “Let’s put them in the window. No need to sell them right away. Let’s just enjoy them for a while.”

  “Gust, I think you’re a romantic.”

  He winked at her and handed her a rag.

  An hour later, with the washed insulators lining the window—honey amber, royal purple, aqua, apple green, white with red swirls—the overhead lights transformed the front window into a prism of color.

  “Just imagine how radiant it will be when the sun finally comes out,” Gust said. “See, you just never know when something seemingly ordinary might become rare and precious.”

  He might just hate people.

  Casper stood in line, eyeing the last piece of pepperoni being offered to the person in front of him, and nearly did something irrational.

  Like tackle the patron, steal the pizza, and run for the hills.

  Or rather, the impulse to run might be from the onslaught of bargain hunters storming Wild Harbor, trying to lay their hands on the deals of the season. The door busters had lined up at 6 a.m., despite the early morning fog, and emptied the 75-percent-off racks in the first hour.

  He tried to convince himself that these early morning shoppers weren’t so different from him—they recognized something priceless in a $1.99 teal fleece pullover with raspberry trim.

  But the fight that broke out over a pair of ski pants for six bucks? Yeah, he just about chucked the tourists right off the premises.

  Maybe he didn’t hate people. Just . . . customers.

  “Casper? What’ll you have?” Claire gestured him to the counter.

  “Freedom?”

  Claire raised an eyebrow. “The retail world feeling constrictive to your ramblin’ man genes?”

  “Large pepperoni and mushrooms, deep-dish, to go.”

  She laughed, keyed in the order. “Should I charge this to Ned’s account?”

  He nodded, ordered a drink, paid for it, and moved over to the soda machine. There he leaned against the door to wait, peering into the waiting area.

  The residents of Deep Haven appeared as tired of winter as he. Pale as the dour sky, most still wore parkas, glistening with the residue of the fog off the lake. It covered the town, a ghoul that seeped between the buildings, hovering over the bay as if it were a haunted moor.

  The door jangled, and his gaze flitted over to catch the customer, his stupid heart leaping as Raina came in, hands in her pockets, wearing her cute pink hat over her long dark hair. She looked up and, for a second, met his gaze.

  And if it were possible, went just a little more pale.

  Huh?

  He frowned at her, not sure why seeing him should elicit that response.

  Then she nodded at him, dismissive, before getting in line.

  The gesture lit him up. That and his too-early morning and the fact that last time they’d talked, he actually—foolishly—thought they were friends. And worse was the realization that she’d so easily forgotten him, moving on with Monte . . .

  Monte. In a flash, he saw her expression as she got out of the car that Saturday night. If he didn’t know better, he’d call her afraid.

  He moved over to her, standing next to her in line. “Are you okay?”

  She glanced at him, frowning, then stared ahead. “What are you talking about?”

  And that stirred him even more. Because he saw her swallow as if nervous. “You’re not allowed to talk to me, are you? That’s why you didn’t call.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I’ve been busy, is all.”

  But he wasn’t quite buying it, especially not after seeing the tightening of her jaw.

  “It�
�s Monte. He told you not to call me.” He lowered his voice. “Is he threatening you?”

  Raina jerked to look at him, her mouth in a perfect, tight knot. “Leave me alone, Casper.” But the way she peered past him toward the dining room as if checking for prying eyes made him hold his ground.

  “Raina, you don’t have to be with him—”

  “You know, I don’t think I’m hungry.” She turned and headed toward the door.

  Shoot, but something about this woman just made him . . . well, care. Because he’d seen Raina with fire and passion and courage and somehow she’d vanished almost before his eyes.

  “Raina. Stop.” He had her by the arm and turned her. They stood on the sidewalk, the mist twining around them. She glanced at his hand on her arm and he let go.

  She kept moving down the street.

  “Raina, come on.” He scrambled after her, hating the way his pride lay in pieces on the street. “What happened? I thought you were going to call—you said we’d go to Aggie’s—”

  “What is your problem, Casper? So I didn’t call. Get over it.”

  Ouch. He recoiled, stung, but rebounded fast. “I thought we were better friends than that.”

  She stopped, her eyes hard, bright. “We’re not. We’re nothing.”

  He didn’t mean to flinch.

  Then—and this was even more painful—she softened her tone as if regretting her words. “Besides, Aggie’s place is snowed in. I can’t get there.” She’d shoved her hands into her pockets and now continued quick-walking away.

  And he was just curious enough to start after her. “Done. It just so happens I drove the resort truck into work today, and it still has the plow on it—”

  “No.” She stopped, her voice shaky. And her eyes—yeah, he’d called it right. Fear. Or something like it, rooted deep inside. “Listen, I should have never gone to Naniboujou with you. I shouldn’t have said there is nothing between us. Of course there will always be something between us. But that’s the problem. How am I supposed to move on? We need to let our friendship go and try to forget.”